


Kick Up That Dust

by ottermelons (goldkirk)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Modern AU, Other, Wanderlust, wanderlust au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3634182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/pseuds/ottermelons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” ~ From On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.</p>
<p>Armin likes to believe that nothing lies behind him except the memories and lessons from all the places he's visited, and everything lies ahead of him that he could possibly want because the world is his playground and the open road is his domain. But you can never really outrun your past, and man isn't made to forget. It always comes back to you in the end, he's been warned—except that's not quite true. It never truly leaves you in the first place, and Armin's about due to find that out.</p>
<p>(Or, the story where a wanderlust-consumed Armin is running towards the horizon like he's being chased by Death himself, and along the way he begins to realize that maybe everybody is running from something, and addictions can come in all shapes and sizes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leaps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avoidingavoidance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin’s life until this has been a series of leaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really short chapter, but only because it's the first one—the opening. The rest will definitely be longer.

_“There's a race of men that don't fit in,_  
_A race that can't sit still;_  
_So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will._  
_They range the field and rove the flood,_  
_And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood,_  
_And they don't know how to rest.”_

~Robert W. Service

* * *

He’s eleven years old and every kick of his feet pulls him higher, back and forth along the repeating sine curve of the swing’s arc. The playground around him is deserted, and heavy with the humid, prickling promise of a spring storm. He kicks until he’s going weightless at the height of each arc. Each angry slice of his bare feet through the air is driven by a soul-deep pain only children can truly feel.

They told him he was weak. They told him no one cared. They told him...they told him that he wasn’t good enough.

Kick. Fly. Float. Fall back down hard. (Fight against gravity, fight against all the chains holding you down—fight the boxes people put you in, fight the hierarchies and the bullies and every little string holding you back) Kick. Fly. Float. Fall.

The sky is about to rip apart in a deluge and the ropes on the swing are about to snap from being pulled so hard and Armin knows nothing but his own anger, throbbing through his arteries. It’s the righteous anger of a child, still innocent, who knows that he’s not being treated fairly. It’s not a grown up anger, that would stew or fester or ever fight back. It’s a child’s anger, that hurts and teaches and shapes a belief so deep in his core that he won’t put a name to it until he’s grown up and worn down, and huddled under a tree on the back roads of Bhutan. It’s a child’s anger, fast and new and bright with the fire to spark something within an open, blank slate of a spirit.

Children are so easily written on.

He’s not going to fight back. Armin knows himself better than that.. They’re right, he’s weak. But it’s his weakness that gives him strength, because they underestimate him. They always underestimate him. Normally he agrees with them, but he is so angry, so determined—

He’s going to wait. He will wait and plan, and he’s going to work. Every day, every year, every single breath, he’s going to fight to get better. Not just better: the best. He’s going to be so good that no one will be able to ignore him anymore, and they’re all going to look up suddenly and realize how much he really is worth and then. Then they would be sorry that they’d rejected him and told him he was worthless.

He was going to be so good they couldn’t ignore him. He was going to be better than the best. He was going to be amazing, and the others were going to see one day. He was going to be the best, the biggest, and then they’d be sorry.

The sky cracks just as he lets go at the top of the arc, and the first lightning flash visible in front of the trees illuminates his graceful flight down onto the gravel. Abandoning his old, sturdy, dependable canvas sneakers, he takes off towards home at a sprint and relishes the mud splashing up his legs, the gravel tearing little stinging cuts into his still-bare feet. It’s something he controls. This is pain he chose, and this is pain that is will make him stronger.

* * *

 

From that first flying leap he took, the first steps of that wild run, the simmering pull towards unbridled freedom begins burning deep inside him; it burns an irrevocable seal on his soul. And when he dreams at night of strange forests and far-off wanderings among landscapes he’s never seen, something within his child’s heart knows he can never break the contract he’s forged.

He never does go back for those shoes.

* * *

 

He’s seventeen and choosing a college, the shining star of his hometown. Honors and awards and hundreds of universities begging him to choose them, grace them with his talents.

Somehow, victory doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would. But he holds to his course, because he set it years ago and there wouldn’t be a point in changing now. He chooses the most beneficial option and takes that leap.

* * *

 

He’s nineteen and screaming on a rooftop.

He’s living off adrenaline thrills because nothing gives him the satisfaction he craves. He gave up on finding it in the schoolwork he still faithfully completes. Now he searches for it in the rush of spray paint art at 3 A.M., in the wildly dangerous rooftop-leaping he’s started flinging himself into (literally and figuratively) just to feel something.

* * *

 

One day, he leaves and he doesn’t come back.

Armin’s life until this has been a series of leaps. He’s taken so many blind jumps, but it’s never been into what he wanted. Every leap he’s taken so far has been to fulfill other people’s critera. To measure up and succeed on a scale that others determined. He’s finished with that now.

He’s got a backpack to his name and _On the Road_ clutched in his right hand like a Bible. And as he takes his first running steps towards the next cliff edge he’s about to dive off of, the first one he’s truly chosen for himself, he realizes that all this time he’s been wrong.

It was never the fear before the jump that he craved. It was the thrill of the fall.

* * *

 

Armin Arlert tugged his old red bandanna a little higher on his shaggy mess of blonde hair, squinting at the rising dust hovering over the horizon. It was rare, in this devastatingly-poor area of Belize, to come across any vehicle. And whatever this one was, it was kicking up a lot of dust. The odd rich kid out for a joy ride wouldn’t be driving out here; there were much more appealing places to speed around with daddy’s top down and impress the squealing friends in the backseat.

It was most likely a supply van or jeep, maybe even a tourist bus. The buses were the best, because they could always be counted on to have air conditioning—and usually snacks. Armin never ceased to be amazed at how many cruise ship tourists loved to proudly present him with one of those tiny little mini-boxes of cereal. It always amused him—were they proud of their little stolen cereals? Was it their small way of living on the edge or getting an adrenaline rush from going out of their comfort zone? Were all these tourists trying, in their quiet, sheltered little ways, to express somehow that they weren’t just part of a herd, that they had a little spark of fire inside them that made them different from the rest of the cruise ship sheep?

That thought always made him laugh, because he would wonder—did it make them any different from the rest if everyone did it? Maybe it did, because they believed it did. Was it the person themself that determined their own experiences of existence, or was that something immutable and only the person’s perceptions were subjective?

Whatever the fundamental truths of individuality were, the truth Armin had at the moment was that there was a vehicle approaching for the first time in two days and he would really love to snag a ride to the coast if he could. He loved the walking and traveling solo, he really did. But there was no shame in wanting a break every now and then, and quite frankly his decrepit shoes probably wouldn't last him another day of trekking over rock-laced terrain. He started a slow walk towards the approaching vehicle, remembering to throw a casual salute to old Snake Man perched in his house of cardboard boxes.

Snake Man shouted in acknowledgement, raising his hands in the air and carrying one of the snakes up with him. Armin laughed and gave him a final wave before turning back to the road. The vehicle—a jeep, he could see now—would probably cross paths with him in only a minute or two now.

As he picked up his pace, he breathed in the distinctive damp dust, warm and fragrant with the living scents of the earth. The kind of land that had been achingly absent from his childhood home, the kind he’d never seen until he’d ended up kicked off a train in Mexico. Most people would say it was dry, unfruitful, dead. It certainly didn’t look like much. But Armin knew they were wrong. When you lived with the earth, when you walked it so much that it started seeping through your skin into your bones, when you had experienced being so hungry you were willing to eat mud just to ease the pain, when you had exhausted yourself so deeply that you fell face-down in the dirt and were breathing in soil with each tired breath, you began to understand how alive the earth really was.

Armin’s tiny puffs of dust were quickly being overwhelmed by the billowing halo of dust from the Jeep. Armin shoved out an arm and leapt almost into the vehicle’s path, shouting hello in about four different languages for good measure. An alarmed shout came from the Jeep as the driver slammed on their brakes, and Armin stepped back to wait patiently.

After a few muffled curses accompanied some engine-killing noises that sounded a tad bit angrier than necessary to Armin—although what did he know? He hadn’t driven a car since that time on Isla Roatan eight months before, and that hadn’t even been legal—the driver finally kicked open the door and jumped out into the settling dust, looking fairly pissed off. When he turned around and looked over the hood at where Armin stood, his mouth was already open (probably to cuss him out)...but his entire expression flipped to utter shock as Armin’s voice filled across the space between them.

_  
“Jean?” _

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Reunions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They weren’t college students anymore, not dumb kids in an in-between period, but the soul of the song still lifted their moods and made them feel like the whole world still lay open before them, waiting for them to pick any path they wanted and just charge ahead.
> 
> In a way, Armin thought, that never really changed. You could always jump up and do that. It’s just that people stopped thinking they could, and so after a while they never even imagined the possibility of trying again, much less actually doing it.

Armin’s single exclamation hovered in the air between them. It was almost tangible, a near-ethereal spirit, Armin imagined, bobbing between the two young men and unable to vanish until the sequence set in motion by it’s appearance had come to a conclusion.

After a humid period of silent staring, Jean whipped around the Jeep's hood, bristling like a mad cat, and socked Armin square in the jaw. Armin swung to the side slightly, following the force of the blow, and then straightened. He frowned slightly and rubbed his reddening skin.

"I'm sure I deserved that,” he said.

  
"Yeah," Jean growled. "You really did."

  
"What do I need to give an apology of debatable sincerity for this time?"

Jean snorted almost before he could help himself, catching the traitorious sound partway out of his mouth and turning it into a sort of badly-faked sneeze. Old friendships weren’t easily affected, even when one of the parties was holding some long-simmering anger. Armin tried not to grin at how hard Jean was trying to keep up the angry exterior.

“If you’re gonna be so flippant about it, I might as well leave.” Jean turned, taking quick steps back over to the driver’s side door. Armin vaulted over the Jeep’s hood after him, reaching out and snagging Jean’s sleeve.

  
“Hey, I’m sorry! Jean, don’t be like that—”

“Like _what_?”

“All...grumpy. You’re not usually this touchy.”

“Oh yeah, and how would you know? You haven’t been around for almost three years now! Maybe I’m like this all the time.”

“Nah,” Armin mused, noting the stinging truth of Jean’s words. “People’s basic personalities don’t change that much. You can be kind of acidic but you’re not short-tempered. That was Daz.”

Jean couldn’t contain the snort this time. His hand slid off the door handle. “Yeah, Daz was a piece of work, wasn’t he?”

Armin laughed. “He sure was. Good times…”

The uncertain silence hovered between them again. It seemed that after so long apart, following such different paths, they were having a hard time remembering what they could talk about it. It didn’t help that neither of them had been any good at making small talk in the first place. Jean’s hand jerked halfway up and stayed there as he opened his mouth, holding the silence for a moment longer.

“You ditched on me, Armin. I showed up for our run and you weren’t there. I waited. I got worried. And then I went back to the dorms and found out that—that you had just _left_? You just ran off and didn’t say anything. You didn’t even leave me a _message_ , not even _one damn text_ —” Jean’s voice cracked a little. He turned away, took a deep breath. “You just _left_ , man. You left and you didn’t even say goodbye.”

Armin yanked on the edge of his bandana, shifting his feet on the dirt road. Side to side, always restless, always moving. He yanked his fingers away from the bandana and shoved them in the pockets of his old cargo shorts. His thumbs stuck up, twisting in and out of the unfilled belt loops. “I’m...I’m sorry Jean. I really am. When I left, I wasn’t thinking straight. I was selfish and reckless and I’m sorry for that.”

Jean huffed and squinted over at the treeline. “Yeah, well. I’m not—I’m not really mad at you anymore. I think I get it, man, I do. Or at least, I understand enough to get why you ran. But you left an almighty mess behind when you did, you know that? And it was the rest of us who had to pick up your pieces.”

Armin’s hands were out of his pockets and scraping through his flyaway hair, bandana clutched tightly in one of them. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Jean hit him gently on the shoulder and half-grinned. “Hop in the car and I’ll fill you in on what happened, and then you can tell me about all the trouble you’ve been getting up to since I saw you last.”

“O-okay.” Jean gave Armin a little shove over towards the other side of the Jeep and they both hopped in. Unlike in their earlier days days of nighttime group drives in the city and occasional drag racing, neither of them bothered with seatbelts. Hands still twitched towards them—automatic habits stemming from the earliest of childhood lessons are hard to shake, after all—but neither follow through. Jean threw the vehicle into drive and hit the gas. They flew down the road, guided on both sides by the ever-rising jungle. Jean started to tell Armin what they’d gone through back in Sina—the shitstorm of news stories trying to get to the bottom of the most prestigious honors student/genius/rising star’s sudden disappearance, university inquiries, police interviews, divying up his stuff.

“Who got my old violin?” Armin interrupted. It had been his since his twelfth birthday, a rugged, sturdy, elegant antique that fit just right under his fingers, slid perfectly beneath his chin. He hadn’t let anyone else touch it, not even his instructor, Eld Jinn (who in his time had been a virtuoso and played in several orchestras).

“You wrote pretty clear instructions about everything,” Jean replied, glancing over at Armin with an incredulous expression. “You know who got it.”

“I didn’t expect them to actually follow the instructions,” Armin laughed.

“Dude. You had the document officially notarized and signed by Judge Zackley. There was no way they could have gone against it.”

“So Levi has it, then?”  
“Of course.”

“Well,” Armin mused as he folded his fingers behind the headrest, “it’ll stay in pristine shape, that’s for sure. And I know Levi’ll have been pulling it out once a month to make sure it’s in tune.”

“YOU’D LET HIM—”

“He’s not playing it!” Armin exclaimed. “Just checking the tuning. Keeping it in shape until…”

“Until you come back for it someday?” Jean finished.

Armin gripped the inside handle in silence.

“Well,” Jean sighed, “when you do go back for it, you’re going to have to travel a bit. Levi’s in good old New York City now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Opened up a tea shop in Chelsea, doing pretty well last I heard.”

“I’m glad,” Armin said, and he really was. Levi had had a pretty shitty childhood. The least he deserved was one little dream working out.

“Your turn,” Jean said a little while later, after he’d finished catching Armin up.

“All right, not much to tell though. I left and hit the road, and I’ve been traveling ever since.”

“Where?”  
“All over. Kenya, London, Spain, Mexico, Utah, you name it.”

Jean whistled. “Damn. How’re you paying for that? How do you live?”

“I work where I can, share when I need to, and do a lot of solo camping. I’ve become an expert in dumpster diving and foraging, to be honest. But really, a lot of the time locals are really generous if you show a genuine interest. Don’t be a tourist, really care, really want to dive into the soul of a place, and there will always be someone willing to teach you and let you earn your experiences. Usually farming families or small businesses are the best.”

“You like it?”

Armin tipped his head. “It’s not...it’s not so much a like as a _need_. It’s my life,” he said simply. “It’s what I do.”

“And you’re okay with it?” Jean asked.

“I chose this,” Armin said. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, I do some other things—I’m a part-time photographer for a couple of publications, I do some travel writing. Sometimes I work as a translator if anyone can hunt me down and pin me in one place for long enough.”

“Sounds pretty exciting,” Jean mused.

“It’s enough.” Armin looked over at him. “So what about you? What’s your life?”

“Me? I’m a florist,” Jean grinned.

“No way.”

“Way.”

“You? A florist? Come on, you’re pulling my leg.”

“In France.”

“What?!”

“Yep. Jinae. Remember Marco? My roommate Sophomore year?”

“Yeah, freckles, physics, and niceness?”

“That’s him. Anyway, we hit it off and stayed super close, and in the end I followed him back to France and kind of got pseudo-adopted by his mom. We have shops next to each other on this little main street in the old part of town. He repairs motorbikes and I sell flowers. It’s a good arrangement, because I’ve got the clunkiest old vespa that always needs repairs, and he always wants flowers to cheer up the shop and make it smell less like motor oil.”

“I can’t,” Armin wheezed, “stop laughing...about y-you...on a vespa.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” Jean said, not too convincingly.

“Really though,” Armin said once he got his giggles under control, “what are you doing out here in Belize, then? I’m traveling, but you’ve got a steady life and job over in France. How did you end up here?”

“Ah, that would all be thanks to one Doctor Zoe Hange, the best ancient history and archaeology professor on the planet.”

“Oh, I remember Dr. Hange! I loved her.”

“Everyone loved her.”

“So she what, asked you to pick something up for her, since you were her prize pupil?”

“No, actually! She got a grant to do a dig on a site near the Altun Ha Myan ruins, fully funded, and asked me if I wanted to join in for a month—all expenses paid!”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. No way was I turning that down. So here I am!”

“Here you are,” Armin agreed. “I’m guessing that’s where we’re headed now?”

“Yeah. I can drop you off before that if you want, but I don’t trust myself to go off-route anywhere, sorry.”

“No, it’s fine! I’m not headed anywhere in particular anyway, and it’d be nice to say hello to Dr. Hange again.”

“She missed you, you know.” Jean said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I missed her too,” Armin said. “I miss a lot of people. But I still wouldn’t go back.”

Jean hummed.

As had talked, the tension and guilt slowly edged out of Armin’s fingers, replaced by his normal restless energy. His fingers twitched, tapped, thumped against anything they could reach: door handle, window ledge, dashboard, Jean’s headrest—

“Would you cut it out?” Jean growled. “Look, why don’t you put on some music or something. Sing along instead of tapping like that, geez.”

“Really? You’re okay with music?” Armin asked, definitely perking up.

“Anything that makes you sit still. Or at least stiller.”

“Is it okay if I put in my own CD?”

“Go ahead.”

Armin reached into a pocket of his backpack and carefully opened a CD pouch, pulling one out and popping it into the player before Jean could get a good glimpse of the title. He hit play and the first notes came on.

“No way!” Jean yelled. “You’re kidding me! You still have this dumb thing?” Armin hit pause.

“Of course,” Armin grinned. “Just like old times? Both of us yelling the lyrics and driving across the middle of nowhere with the windows down?”

“Sure,” Jean laughed. “Although this is a little different from midwestern interstates.”

Armin shrugged. “Same basic idea, though.” Armin hit play again and they started yelling out the lyrics in sync.

_“Here’s your story, let’s begin_

_The water’s fine, come on, dive in_

_The future’s here, it’s right before your eyes._

_Step by step you're on your way,_

_Welcome to a brighter day._

_Don't you know, it feels good to be alive …”_

They weren’t college students anymore, not dumb kids in an in-between period, but the soul of the song still lifted their moods and made them feel like the whole world still lay open before them, waiting for them to pick any path they wanted and just charge ahead.

In a way, Armin thought, that never really changed. You could always jump up and do that. It’s just that people stopped thinking they could, and so after a while they never even imagined the possibility of trying again, much less actually doing it.

“This is my theme song,” Armin yelled over the wind and an instrumental break in the song.

“Yeah?”

“We've got pretty good lives, Jean.” Armin smiled.

“Yeah,” Jean agreed, “you know, we really, really do.”

_"Times are changing everywhere—_

_Do we dream, and do we dare?_

_It's up to you, the door is open wide._

_Feel the rhythm of today,_

_Learn the part and join the play._

_The world is here, let's take it for a ride."_

* * *

 

"Armin Arlert?!"

He barely had enough time to brace his hand against the side of the hot jeep before he was body-slammed by a dusty figure whose hat chose that moment to tumble off their head and right into Armin's face.

"Hi Dr. Hange. It's good to see you again." Armin grinned and shook his head like a dog until the floppy hat tumbled off his face and hit the ground. It would have been easier to use his arms, but seeing how they were completely immobilized by Dr. Hange's enthusiastic hug, he made do.

"I can't believe it!" The professor broke the hug but held on to Armin's shoulders in a vice grip. "It's really you! I figured you'd have drowned in a monsoon or something by now. Look at you, I think you've even gotten taller!"

Armin had. He refrained from pointing out that he was now on eye level with Dr. Hange, who before had stood at least an inch or two above her tallest students. Before Armin could respond, she started shaking him a bit too enthusiastically by the shoulders, and his startled yelp was drowned out by her chatter.

"Oh, you have to see what we're working on, you'd love it! Maybe I can even talk you into staying on for a bit and working as an assistant! I know you're not technically qualified, but--"

"Dig leader!" a distressed voice called out. Glancing over the professor's shoulder, Armin saw an equally dusty (but exponentially more distressed-looking) man jogging over. "You're shaking him too hard!"

"Oh dear," she said, letting go mid-shake. Armin almost tumbled flat on his rear end in the dirt. "Sorry, Arlert. Sometimes I forget my own strength. But seriously, you should come see what we're doing! It's magnificent, and the sheer ramifications of the fossil we're uncovering could change everything we thought we knew up till now..." She had already started off back towards the roped off dig site. Armin rubbed his neck as Jean stepped up beside him, grinning after their old professor.

"Still the same old Dr. Hange," he chuckled.

"I think I have whiplash," Armin mumbled.

Jean laughed and clapped Armin on the shoulder. "Come on. We might as well go see what's got her so excited before that guy has an aneurysm."

Armin remembered to scoop up the forgotten hat before following Jean off to where Dr. Hange was dancing in excitement.

* * *

Armin wasn't quite sure how he'd gone from discussing fossils with Hange--"No need to call me

'doctor' here, just Hange is fine!" she'd insisted--to having a near-death experience on the edge of a gorge, but there he was.

 

He also wasn't quite sure why he was desperately clinging to a smelly sheep covered in what looked like tribal warpaint, but he did know it was all those kids' fault. Over the last few minutes he'd learned several new things:

 

1) local children can be absolute little _pickles_ , and he should have been able to remember that after everything that went down back during the Dead Station incident. But noooo.

2) if someone is shoving a large sheep into his arms and yelling, his inital startle reaction is apparently to grab it and run.

3) Also he apparently should never be trusted to make decisions under pressure, since his most recent one has led to him careening towards the edge of a cliff above a canyon, desperately clutching a large, smelly, heavy sheep, and screeching like a pterodactyl from the depths of hell is chasing him.

 

His momentum was propelling him too fast to stop in time, and he knew he had only a few seconds before he went straight over the edge. Odd thoughts flitted through his mind in little nanosecond shreds of awareness. Things like:

 

_No one ever told me sheep were so heavy._

and

_This isn't remotely how I ever thought I'd die_

and

_Oh man I still regret eating seven gelattos in one sitting back in Rome they were so good but that was a terrible decision_

until finally, with just a second to spare he had one last thought--

_wait a minute I am nOT GOING TO DIE BECAUSE OF SOME DUMBASS SHEEP THERE IS **NO** WAY IN **HELL** _

\--and acted on instinct.

 

He used the sheep as a counterweight and, swinging around shot-putted its sorry hide way up the slope. His circular motion cut down his forward momentum and translated most of it into centrifugal force, so when he lost his balance he fell towards the slope and only skidded a couple of feet to a halt instead of plunging headfirst off the cliff.

 

Armin lay where he fell, staring in disbelief up at the cloud-speckled azure sky and distantly registering the sheep's distressed bleating somewhere above him mixing with shouting. As Jean's gaping face dropped to a cautious halt upside-down above him, Armin screwed his eyes shut and gave into ridiculous, roaring, gut-cramping laughter until tears rolled down his flushed and dirt-splattered cheeks.


End file.
